


Arboreal

by Guede



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Cynicism, FC Bayern München, Humor, M/M, Picnics, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27808909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Picnics and book criticism.
Relationships: Philipp Lahm/Thomas Müller
Kudos: 1





	Arboreal

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2011.

“So I finally got around to reading it,” Thomas said, putting down the bottle. He began to stand up, then frowned as the bottle tipped over on the slope. Just before it would’ve rolled over, he reached down and straightened it out, then lifted his hand so that only a finger stayed against the side of the bottle. Then he eased the finger up the side of the bottleneck.

The bottle was straight. Then it wasn’t, listing slowly across his finger. He sighed and picked up the bottle, then hunted around till he could find a tuft of grass where he could wedge it. The blanket flapped against his hip and he looked round, then grinned as Philipp impatiently shook out the sheet again. Every time Philipp tried to lay it down, a corner would flip under and he’d have to try again.

Thomas wandered back and caught the other end as Philipp flicked it up again, then held it out as they put it on the grass. He pinned down his part by sitting on it, while Philipp prodded around till he turned up a couple stones. “Lazy,” Philipp said, chucking the stones onto the near corners.

“Sorry, captain, I’ll fix that right away,” Thomas answered with a grin. He flopped backward and sighed, then rolled onto his side and reached for the basket. When Philipp swung the food away from him, he rolled the other way and groped after it, and then gave up with a face so petulant that Philipp had to sit from laughing. “All right, fine. I’ll write up an apology to publish in the papers.”

Philipp coughed a little in the middle of his laugh, then let himself fall quiet. He dropped the basket between them and flipped open the lid: their wives had packed them a nice lunch, sandwiches with lots of cold cuts, and he’d made sure the beer was good too. Since there’d only been two of them, he hadn’t gone for the trouble of a cooler, but had gotten one of those silvery insulated bags and stuffed it with the bottles and a cold-pack. Of course, now it was missing one bottle, because Thomas had to be precocious like that.

“I read it,” Thomas said again. He was on his back, head turned away from Philipp, and when Philipp craned his neck a little, he saw it was because Thomas was trying to get his beer without getting up. It looked like he was lying just short, but he had a determined set to his mouth and an arm stretched all the way out. “Personally, I thought it was all right. Of course I wasn’t there back then.”

“No, you were still running around in shorts.” Philipp got out his own bottle and began to mess with it and the bottle-opener. Then he put those back in the basket and got up.

Just as he did, Thomas somehow lengthened his fingers so that they grazed his bottle into tipping towards him. In a flash he had it balanced on his chest, while his other arm now crooked over the edge of the basket, groping and feeling. He looked up at Philipp. “I’m _still_ running around in shorts.”

“You’re a bit of a bastard, you know,” Philipp finally said. He sat back down and watched and listened to Thomas fumble around, grunting. Then he sighed and took the bottle off Thomas’ chest, and pried off the cap with the bottle-opener. “When _I_ was your age—”

Thomas laughed, and his hand slipped off the edge of the basket so his arm knocked the whole wicker thing down towards their knees, and coming damn near tearing a hole in the blanket, too. “Oh, God. Phil. Don’t.”

Philipp grinned to himself, jiggling the bottle cap in his hand. Then he flicked it towards Thomas’ chest, and while the other man was batting it away, he drank Thomas’ bottle. A hand yanked at his wrist and he grabbed it and pushed it off, and drank more beer. It went at him again and he put his leg down and squished it under his knee.

“My captain, the beer-stealer,” Thomas grumbled. He got awkwardly up on one knee, his hand still under Philipp’s, and rummaged one-handed in the basket till he’d managed to get his own beer. Then he flopped back down again, his head just shy of Philipp’s leg. His hand under the leg moved around till it was away from the pressure of the knee and under the softer push of Philipp’s calf. “No, really.”

“Doesn’t matter.” For a moment Philipp slacked on the man, and if Thomas had wanted, he could’ve freed himself. He leaned his weight on his hip and dangled the bottle between his fingers.

Thomas shifted closer, so his breath spread over Philipp’s thigh, warm and moist with the beer. “So then it’s good I’m a bastard already.” He didn’t look up when Philipp looked down, but just sprawled there, his thoughtfulness lying peacefully on his face, only the lashes stirring a little. “Phil. So you were always going to do it anyway. I’m just saying…it seemed all right to me.”

“That wasn’t really what I—” Then Philipp stopped himself. He put the side of his wrist to his mouth, then smiled into it and twisted his wrist around so the lip of the bottle pressed against his lip. Sometimes it just wasn’t about what you really meant, or meant to do. He sighed, shrugged, and as Thomas moved his head onto Philipp’s thigh, Philipp put both hands behind him. “Thanks.”

Thomas just grinned at him again. The other man spared a moment to drop his empty bottle back into the basket, and then he was pushing Philipp back, his mouth and hands as warm as the sunlight. Philipp curled his hand around Thomas’ neck, then cursed and jerked up as he felt beer running over his other hand. He barely moved his bottle before it spilled; Thomas made Philipp move around him, refusing to change his focus.

“Entitled,” Philipp muttered.

“You drank my beer. What else am I supposed to do?” Which Thomas answered himself right after, tasting sour-sweet like the tang of a cold-snap apple.

He _was_ young, in terms of the life they lived in, in terms of the ways by which they were seen and measured and summed up. And he could act like it, impatient and hungry, but they’d known each other for too long for Philipp to be fooled by that. They were on the old side with each other as far as that went, and that didn’t at all concern itself with how long they’d been taking picnics in the fall together. So it was strange that Philipp could meet that clear-eyed gaze and wonder where it had come from. He should’ve known—it’d be expected that he would.

“Phil,” Thomas said, his brows rising. He stretched over Philipp for something and came back with Philipp’s half-drunk bottle, and instead of drinking it, let the bottom roll around on Philipp’s shoulder. “You’re going to at least sign one for me, won’t you?”

The glass wasn’t cold anymore but it wasn’t hot either. It almost didn’t feel of anything at all, except for the pressure. Philipp turned away from it and into Thomas’ arm, the crook of it pillowing his cheek. “You read the bit about what it was like when I came up for the first time, and the old ones left the new ones to take care of them—”

“I read the whole thing.” Thomas finished off the bottle, or got rid of it somehow, and put his head down. He and Philipp looked at each other for a moment, and then he curled himself like a cat, his mouth brushing Philipp’s forehead. “It’s been a good time for me, with you and with the others and Löw. And I know it’s because while I was running around in shorts, things were changing. Just because I wasn’t there doesn’t mean I couldn’t see what that took.”

Philipp moved his arm and his leg, so he was comfortable, and then Thomas decided he’d rather have his knee over there. So they wriggled around, neither really wanting to do the sensible thing and get up and properly position themselves, and it took a while to figure out how to fit on the blanket. They finally had to push off the basket, and Thomas with his longer legs had to settle for his feet on the grass, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Captain,” he said, quietly.

Philipp kissed him, then ran a hand through his hair, roughly. “Shut up for a moment,” Philipp said, and held them on the grass.

**Author's Note:**

> In summer 2011, excerpts of a book by Lahm were serialized in _Bild_ and caused [something of a controversy](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/aug/29/bayer-leverkusen-dortmund-bundesliga) when they were [perceived as criticizing](http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/raphael_honigstein/08/26/Jurgen.Klinsmann.crticism/index.html) several former coaches of his. Müller reportedly took the whole situation with a sense of humor, and wanted a dedication to him in the book from Lahm.


End file.
